Seven Years of Silence
by GabiWritesJustBecause
Summary: Seven years without Harry. Seven years riding to fame and crashing without warning. Full Summary inside. Larry Stylinson, with [possible] future Ziam and Nosh. Rated for later chapters.


**Seven years without Harry. Seven years riding to fame and crashing without warning. I was low, I was drunk most of the time, and I knew that Zayn, Liam, Niall, and Josh were sick of being near me. But I had every right to be upset. My best friend walked out of my life before I could work out my feelings for him. And lastly I was perfectly deaf, not having heard a single whisper for seven years. And then Harry comes back, and everything is abruptly and deafeningly loud.**

* * *

**Part 1:**

The first parts of our lives are spent in silence.

We slowly become aware of things to say, and then we say them. My first word was 'Mum', and I always thought it funny the way that works. The person that meant the most to me, now distances away. My first word, my first realization, my own mother, now might as well have shifted to another planet. My second word was 'dad', but that doesn't count for much either, and it's lost its significance simply by being second.

We remember our firsts more than anything else. They are special in the fact that you have now taken a step into a world otherwise unmarked by your feet, and maybe you relished in that fact that you had something new. But often we don't stop and add them up, really. All the firsts that we have had. You would be surprised if you start thinking about them.

So my first word was Mum, but I knew my last words wouldn't be for her.

My first pet was a cat, named Dog. Mum hated dogs at first, but I wanted one so bad.

My first crush was Jamie Thompson, from across the street, but she was into blond guys.

My first F was the report on why artistic jobs are rubbish. As an aspiring singer, I refused to do it.

Most importantly, my first and last true love was Harry Styles.

He was also my first tragedy.

* * *

The memories are vague, flashes of goldfish underneath water in moonlight. I remember being in Ms. Softley's tenth grade homeroom, swinging my feet under the desk and flirting loudly with Eleanor. The top she was wearing made her boobs look huge. I remembered stupid things, things that make certain point of the memory sharper than others.

She wore a gold locket, and I wanted to want her more than anything but all I could feel was the nagging worry about why Harry was not sitting in his assigned seat beside me.

Then he comes shuffling in, wincing as all the heads whipped to turn to him, to whisper about how late he was. Everyone knew if Harry was late one more time that he would be in big trouble. Quickly, he gives his late slip to the teacher and rushes into the seat next to me. Eleanor wrinkles her nose at him like he is some disgusting thing and turns around so fast that her hair whips me in the face.

"What's got her panties in a twist?" Harry asks gently, setting his books down.

"Do you really have to ask?" I laugh, and he cracks a reluctant smile, sinking low to avoid the lingering stares.

We all know that Eleanor hates Harry, and the feeling tends to be mutual, but he thinks that I have a crush on her and he doesn't like blowing my chances. I don't contradict him. I can't. I will be very tempted to try and spill my guts and that won't go over very well, given the situations we have lately placed ourselves in. I think he would be majorly grossed out by the things I wanted to admit to him, and I knew whatever faint spark of feeling I had for him them would not be reciprocated, despite everything that had been going on lately.

But that's a story for another time.

"How long do we have left in home room?" he asks, trying to keep his voice low; Ms. Softley has ears like a hawk, but she really only seemed to care about when Harry talked. She's hated him from day one.

"Just a little bit," I reply, talking at a normal volume. "Why are you late?"

His eyes glaze over briefly and he mumbles to himself something; his face scrunches up at my question in an unpleasant way.

"Are you feeling okay, Haz? You don't seem like yourself."

"I need to sleep," he almost sobs, and I jump a little at his abrupt and desperate proclamation.

"Then sleep," I suggest, but he shakes his head roughly, and something is quickly dawning over his face as he looks at me, rubbing a bruise on his shoulder subconsciously.

I don't like it. I know immediately it's something bad.

"I can't…I can't do it anymore." His voice raises and Mrs. Softley glares.

I remember what he was wearing that day; a lime green T-shirt he got for working a fund raiser, and I remember how bright it seemed, trying to match the color of his eyes in terms of brilliance.

I remember how the color made his bruises stand out. Curiously, his eyes followed the direction of mine. The leather bracelet I had given him last Christmas became right on his wrist as he clenched his fist.

"What are you talking about? Harry, you can talk to me, mate." I lower my voice to indicate that he needs to do the same, but instead the situations becomes far worse.

Just as quickly as his panic began, it explodes. He springs up, kicking away his chair and grabbing his books.

"Mr. Styles," Mrs. Softley begins, but he ignores her and focuses on me.

"I'm sorry, Louis. I need to go, now. Before something…well, I don't know. I just don't. But I'll come back really soon, okay?"

"What are you-?"

"MR. STYLES! Report to the office immediately!"

Mrs. Softley stood up and placed her hands on her hips; she was a petite elderly woman who had no idea how small and fragile she really was, but she made up for it with her steely glares and a voice that could get louder than a foghorn.

Usually, the class flinched from the words, but Harry only scans the room, as if he hadn't even hear her.

I watch his eyes pause on us-the group. Best friends. Liam, in the corner, checking over his homework before the outburst; Niall, who had been hunched over eating a biscuit and blatantly ignoring the big sign over the chalkboard-**_ABSOLUTELY NO EATING IN MY CLASSROOM_**-and staring in shock while crumbs cling to his lips; and Zayn, his chair pushed back on two legs, his eyebrows narrowed in confusion and fear.

The Harry turns to me once more, opening his mouth and then closing it. He makes up his mind and turns without a goodbye.

The air about him is filled with a desperation that I has never know, and the room is left in silence.

I can still hear it, ringing in my ears and pressing against my skull, until there is nothing but seven years of it.

I want to tell you I heard from him very soon, like he promised, but he was gone in a brilliant flash, like a brief storm that left nothing in it's wake but a clean slate. I didn't know how to deal with the nothingness he left me in.

The next day I walked to his house and found a 'For Sale' sign on the front lawn. I peered in the windows and saw that most of the furniture was gone.

Harry was as well. Without a goodbye, without warning, and entirely without an explanation, the best thing that ever happened to me had left, all in what had seemed like a split second decision.

* * *

This story doesn't pick up with me meeting him again anytime soon, but that's okay. I have so much to tell. If you are patient, things will come together. This story goes everywhere before it ends. There are so many days and and months and years that I need to explain, but I can't all at once.

But I can tell you everything wouldn't have changed if it hadn't been for Zayn.

He thought of the idea a good three months after Harry left, near the end of the school year. We were walking down the street, to Niall's house to relax for a while before the school's spring dance. We were young and getting ready to graduate, were the hottest guys in school according to the votes, and deep down we knew it.

Even humble Liam would guiltily acknowledge it.

So as we walked down the sidewalk, blazers slung over our shoulders and our laughter echoing around, girls stopped and stared.

What Zayn offered came from point-blank nowhere.

"Why don't we start a band?"

Liam chuckled before catching sight of his expression and halting; Zayn might have just suggested that we shave his head and donate it to the greasy kid who sits behind us in Chemistry class.

"Zayn, you aren't serious," Liam begins, and we hear the father-about-to-give-children-a-speech tone. We are very familiar with it. "You know the chances of us becoming famous are microscopic at the very best and-"

"Let's do it!" Niall interrupts, giving an excited bounce. "I can get Josh to play drums if I bother him enough and I'll play guitar and Liam can as well and we can all sing of course and we could be famous and then we tour the wor-"

"Guys," Liam cuts in (Niall takes a grateful gulp of air), rolling his eyes. "Stuff like that doesn't just happen, no matter how bad you want it."

But it did. Four months after Niall vomited on his prom date after eating the whole bowl of dip; after Zayn broke his foot and made us pamper him wit ice cream and movie marathons of his choice; after Josh turned down scholarship offers, just for a chance at music fame; and after Liam and his long term girlfriend, Lila, ended their relationship and we had to tiptoe around his feelings because he didn't want to seem cumbersome to us. We made it. Wee were signed to a label. And then the press and tours began.

Seven months after Harry left, and then our group became number one.

We were star struck by all the splendors laid at our feet at first. Limos pulled up just to take us to each other's homes, girls began tweeting and messaging us, asking for vulgar things that would have anyone's face turn red. A little later, we all had to have our cell phone numbers changed.

After our first concert, we spent the night jumping on the giant hotel bed and screaming and somehow, we ended up in the floor, the other's all trying to comfort me as I cried. I had been so enthralled, riding on such a high, and then I was tumbling down in a sobbing mess.

"Why did he leave?" I asked them, but they didn't answer, they had no way to tell me what happened because no one knew, and they didn't want to give me false hope.

"Why couldn't he at least say goodbye?" I sobbed, and I thought to myself my face must look very gross right then.

"Why wasn't I good enough for enough that?"

They all looked at one another and sighed, and thinking back, they must have known something I didn't, but I wasn't in the state to ask right then. I sat on an island of suffering, perfectly alone, though I felt their hands on my shoulders.

They said it everything would work out how it should.

* * *

One time, when we were all walking home together, Harry told me that we would always be the same, that we were stuck on the same track, moving in one direction, to the same place, but now he had shifted away, and I felt like what he said was a lie.

But even then, nearly a year after he left, I wanted reassurance that I would see him again, somehow somewhere, and I wanted to cling to his memory like it was a life preserver in a dark ocean.

So we became One Direction. They didn't ask questions when I almost demanded that it become our name, but instead they went along with it. They seemed to be careful what they said around me for the first two years, and they grew quiet when his name was brought up, even more so when I was the one doing it.

Maybe I chased the idea of fame so that he would know I was still out there. I would mention him in interviews, hoping maybe he could hear me somehow, maybe he would find me. They let me believe this for the first few months, until I slowly stopped talking about him, and my hope slipped away.

Good things don't tend to happen to good people though, so as much as I wanted to find him, no matter how much I tried to call out to him during talk shows and songs, he didn't step forward, and I felt myself sinking away from the person I had been, waking from the dreams I had.

Maybe he just didn't care about me as much as I had wanted to believe.

Eleven months after, and then the depression came, then the fire.

And then the silence.


End file.
